1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to computer-generated virtual reality representations of locations. Specifically, the present invention relates to storing, organizing, and providing access to a number of virtual reality representations whose data comes from spy cams and spy cam networks of web cams all through a computer network.
2. Description of the Related Art
Virtual reality (VR) models and simulates views from a location in virtual space. The visitor perceives the view from virtual space on a computer monitor or specialized display, and experiences “movement” by changing position or orientation within the virtual space. The visitor may even be “teleported” to different points in the virtual space.
Although recognized as having substantial potential, virtual reality has remained limited because it has yet to connect to the many cloud databases as well as many remote data gathering devices. As explained below, virtual reality representations model a single virtual space, and authoring virtual reality representations requires specialized computer programming or graphics skills. These factors have hindered broader adoption of virtual reality.
A virtual reality representation models a single volume, area, or point within virtual space. The representation may model physical space, such as a location or region on the Earth, or may model imaginary space in a video game. The visitor can move around in the virtual space, but is limited to remaining in that virtual space.
Authors are usually involved in creating virtual reality representations of the locations, or of related locations. These representations may exist on different websites, servers, or computers. There is a need to expand the data of virtual reality away from authors who happen to take pictures or video of a geo-location.
A webcam is a video camera that feeds its images in real time to a computer or computer network. An IP camera uses a direct connection using ethernet or Wi-Fi whereas a webcam is generally connected by a USB cable, FireWire cable, or similar cable.
The most popular use of these cameras is the establishment of video links, permitting computers to act as videophones or videoconference stations. The common use as a video camera for the World Wide Web gave the webcam its name. Other popular uses include security surveillance, computer vision, video broadcasting, and for recording social videos.
Webcams are known for their low manufacturing cost and flexibility making them the lowest cost form of video telephony. They have also become a source of security and privacy issues, as some built-in webcams can be remotely activated via spyware.
It is desirable to find a way to connect these web and IP cams to the virtual reality networks to take advantage of growing the virtual data base independent of authors.
In particular, it would be desirable that the web and IP camera representations be connected together in a way that enables the visitor to experience these representations. For example, if the locations modeled by a web or IP camera are of a physical location virtual reality visitors select, the visitor could choose that representation to experience. This creates a “virtual universe” made of separate virtual reality web or IP camera representations that can be toured by visitors.
There are also many websites that aggregate the collection of web cams or IP cameras for visitors to explore various geo-locations. However, these websites are not organized by virtual travel and further they are not linked to other forms of data. It would be advantageous to link these web cameras and IP cameras for improvement of visitor's experiences through virtual reality representations.
Prior art U.S. Pat. No. 7,298,378, Issues Nov. 20, 2007, “Virtual reality universe realized as a distributed location network” describes a virtual reality network which provides access to a number of virtual reality representations, each virtual reality representation representing a location in a virtual universe and defined by VR data stored on the network. The VR data can be in a simplified data format. A database stores the network address and the location in the universe of each virtual reality representation. A database server provides access to the database. The database server generates a list of locations in response to a location query from a visitor, and provides the network address of the virtual reality representation of a selected location. A visitor connects to the database server with a client host to visit the locations in the virtual universe. This patent does not describe connections to other data sources other than that created by hum authors.